


Centerpiece

by Corker



Series: Broken Dolls [3]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M, Magic, Sex Toys, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:13:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corker/pseuds/Corker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seneschal Bran invites Bethany to serve as the centerpiece for an orichalcum-fueled party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Centerpiece

“Do you have any idea how much it _cost_ to acquire your company this evening?” The seneschal sounded peeved. “Nearly twenty sovereigns in bribes, _besides_ the favors I had to call in.”

Bethany Hawke, the red scarf at her neck the only deviation from her usual Circle robes, nodded as she walked arm-in-arm with him through the darkening Hightown streets. “Good.”

“Good?” Bran glared sideways at her.

She smiled back brilliantly. “Because I know you’ll want to get your money’s worth.”

One small corner of his scowl turned up and he looked ahead again. “I should take you here in the street. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Bethany shivered and glanced around. The streets weren’t quite empty yet, but... “There’s a nook off to the right,” she suggested.

“Randy little whore,” he said, in fond tone at odds with the words. He tucked his arm in closer to his body, drawing her to his side, and tipped his head to speak almost in her ear. “We’ve got just the thing for that,” he promised, voice so dark and low her breath caught in anticipation.

The estate they finally entered was not a large one. It didn’t have to be: Prosper de Montfort had a luxurious home elsewhere in Kirkwall, his estate at Chateau Haine, and who knew what other properties to his name. This more humble residence was his son Cyril’s apartments, a more private place away from the family homes. And tonight, it was hosting a ‘chalc party.

Discreet elves ushered guests from the foyer down a hall or up stairs, wherever one of the dressing rooms was open. There, clothes were exchanged for a loose silken robe embroidered with the de Montford arms and a black silk domino mask. Bethany regarded her mask dubiously. “Does this _really_ keep people from recognizing you?”

Bran shrugged, securing his. “I certainly don’t imagine I’m anonymous. It’s a tradition, however. Go with it.” He watched, smirking, as she fumble-fingered the ties several times before getting it secure. “Are you that nervous or that eager?”

Mostly nervous, although certainly eager to find out what was in store for her tonight. Not that she was going to admit it. She shifted her weight, thrusting a hip toward him. “You could find out for yourself.”

“And hold up the other guests? Perish the thought.” The way his eyes raked down her bare legs, she figured the thought wasn’t _entirely_ dead, but he only gripped her lightly by the back of the neck and steered her out the door.

Their host was obvious - the only person unmasked in a large room of thirty or so guests, milling about in their robes as a small consort of musicians played. Everyone was robed and upright, so she guessed they hadn’t taken any aphrodisiac yet. “Lord Cyril,” Bran hailed him. There was a bit of chitchat that seemed ridiculously mundane for an orgy - so glad you could make it, wouldn’t miss it for the world, everything looks splendid - before he pushed her a bit forward. “And I’ve brought the centerpiece I promised.”

“And she is utterly lovely. Charmed, serah,” the young lord said warmly, bowing over her hand. “Will you be taking any orichalcum before we get you settled in?”

“Settled... in?” She glanced at Bran, who’d smoothed his face to blandness, and back to her host. She smiled at Cyril. “I’m sorry to be such a bumpkin, but this is my first party. I thought all the guests took a little ‘chalc?”

“Oh, it depends on the sort of party. But you’re the centerpiece tonight, so regardless, it’s up to you.”

‘Centerpiece’ again. Before she could ask, Bran suggested that Cyril show her ‘the apparatus.’ Eyebrow raised, she followed the excited Orlesian to a large table, in the center of which rested a silvery ignot of metal. “Have a good look at that,” Bran said quietly in her ear, so she did.

Cyril rambled at length about the expense, the number of Formari who’d had to work on the thing, the new innovations in runic control. It sounded to Bethany like he understood about half of what he was saying, and she paid more attention to the metal - silverite, she recognized it now - than to her host. Force runes, a few of them, with strange markings around them. She touched them, trying to understand what they meant, and Cyril was abruptly poking her hand with a small silverite wand. “No, no, you have to use one of these. It’s brilliant, really. Controls the vigor, the depth, size, can even alter the shape to some extent. One of a kind item, it really is. Oh, I beg your pardon, more guests arriving. Help yourself to the ‘chalc if you care for it.”

“You’re flushed,” Bran murmured in her ear. “So you’ve figured it out?”

She swallowed and nodded. _That_ rune and that one would create supports so a person kneel on the table but be supported comfortably. The others... telekinetic shivers and a variety of creatively-shaped forcefields. (And, thank the Maker, some Creation runes that looked to function as safeguards against injury.)

“As the centerpiece of the party tonight,” he continued, running a finger slowly down her spine, “you’ll get to sit in that. I told Cyril that I want to keep you there all night, and let the guests play with your settings.” She inhaled unevenly, feeling increasingly like she’d already had a drop or two of the ‘chalc. He reached her tailbone and stroked back upward, nail dragging against the silk robe. “Incessantly fucked all night until you think you can’t come any more, and then fucked _harder_.” He grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her head back sharply to meet his gaze, hot behind heavy eyelids. “Tell me you want that.”

 _Maker, **yes** , I want that._ She licked her lips, darted her eyes over to the silverite slab on the table. But what came out of her mouth was, “What about you?”

One eyebrow rose over Bran’s black mask. “I’m sure I’ll find something to do with my time.”

She reached out to grab the front of his robe, partly for balance and partly to make her point. “I want you to do _me_ ,” she clarified, more stubborn than sultry. She had grown fond of Emeric, very fond, maybe too fond, but she still had _very very good_ memories of Bran’s particular brand of cool, infuriating arrogance and control. _”Then_ the apparatus.”

“I’ll have to have words with Ser Emeric. You’ve gotten bossy,” he frowned. Releasing her hair, he grabbed her wrist instead and led her off to a side room. “Let’s having something of a corrective.”

\-------------

Youth might be wasted on the young, but it certainly wasn’t wasted on _him_. Bran slid his hand thoughtfully along the curve of Bethany’s pert little bottom, now really beginning to glow a fine shade of red. Not that he didn’t appreciate his more mature boudoir companions - far from it. But there was a certain elemental pleasure to be found in smooth, taut skin, fine and silky hair, and the sheer _energy_ with which they wriggled in your lap when you spanked them senseless.

He’d been waiting for this, or something like this, for months. He could have arranged a visit to the Gallows, but then he would have had to _share_ , and he didn’t especially feel like it. Which complicated things when another of the guests here gave him the leverage he needed to bring Bethany - to an orgy, where it would be positively rude not to share. Cyril’s apparatus offered an out.

He was besotted, obviously. No fool like an old fool, and only a fool would pay out twenty sovereigns for an evening’s company. But these mad enthusiasms came less often these days, and it felt good, so he indulged himself.

He lifted his hand to deliver another series of stinging slaps; she jerked and twisted, gasping and mewling, her legs beating time on the padded arms of the large chair he’d found. “It’s almost too bad we’re in company,” he mused, giving her another light caress to make her moan for him. “I could do this until you gave up and gave yourself over to it... but we’ll be having that in a slightly different arena. Now,” he pushed her, not ungently, until her legs slid down to the ground and she was kneeling between his legs, “open wide.”

She looked up at him with eyes that were much more knowing than he remembered, and with a _smirk_ parted her red lips to slowly, smoothly swallow him whole. 

Bran’s breath hissed out when her nose brushed his belly, and he tangled his hands in her soft dark hair. She bobbed her head, letting him feel her throat around him, before drawing back to take a breath. “Again,” he rasped, and she complied. _Maker._ She’d been busy in the Gallows. In the abstract, the thought didn’t bother him, especially if it meant she’d learned _this_.

He pulled her back and off him. She looked... confused, a little hurt. “Didn’t I... I thought you’d like...”

He turned her ‘round and put a hand on her shoulder, guiding her to sit in his lap. With his other hand, he guided the tip of his cock into her, then held her steady.. “I _do_ like, very very much, and we’ll have some more of that later. But right now, when I take away my hand, you’re going to sit down. All the way down, just as you did with your mouth. Understand?”

She nodded with a whimper between anxious and eager. Even if she was no longer an untried virgin, he was still a generously endowed man, and he was asking her to impale herself on him.

He took his hand away and she practically fell into his lap, taking him into her hot, tight wetness with a suddenness that left him momentarily unable to breathe. She arched back into him, fingernails scratching lines up his thighs, gasping and twisting at what had to be an intense, burning stretch. She dropped her head back onto his shoulder, exposing her lovely white throat. With hardly a thought, he leaned in to bite it, not hard enough to break skin but more than enough to leave a mark. She bucked, writhed a moment more, and finally settled, panting. “You feel so good,” she murmured, reaching up to thread one hand through his hair.

 _Flattery?_ Probably not. Almost certainly not. She didn’t seem the sort to indulge.

But she could have learned, just like she learned how to take a man down her throat. He knew, from meetings with her sister, that the Hawke family did what it needed to do to survive and to thrive. He was a man with power, a man with enough gold and favors to get her out of the Gallows from time to time. 

Probably not. Almost certainly not. But _possibly_ , and the sliver of suspicion and doubt was enough to spear his infatuation through the heart.

Almost a relief, actually. He was too stupid when he was besotted, too vulnerable.

“Fuck yourself on me,” he whispered into her ear. Bethany sat forward to comply, and he traced red ribbons down her back with his nails. Just because he was done mooning over her honesty and innocence didn’t mean he didn’t still want to hear her screaming his name.

\------------

The servants pouring wine wore black velvet masks that covered forehead to chin, with no visible straps or ribbons to hold them on. “How do those work?” Bethany asked, accepting a glass. “Your masks, I mean.”

The servant bobbed apologetically. Bran chuckled, taking a glass himself. “There’s a button on the other side that they hold between their teeth. A _moretta_ mask means silence as well as anonymity.” He reached for one of several small vials on the table. “Very popular at some events.”

“I... see.” She swallowed, thinking about being responsible for holding her own gag in her mouth. Her imagination was more than good enough to conjure up a whole scenario to go with ‘some events’... But she could think about that some more later. Bran carefully added one drop of orichalcum to his wine, then offered her the vial. “Will you be taking any?”

She took it and turned it around in her hands. “I’m... not really sure.” Her only experience with the drug was as a punishment, a red-hot desire she was made to endure, untouched, for hours. That had been two drops, she remembered very well. She looked up to see Bran regarding her impassively. “What do you think?”

He shrugged. “I think you should take one drop. It will keep your... _interest_ awake without making it all-consuming. Unless that’s what you want. But that seems too easy, doesn’t it?”

It did. The game, she’d been learning, was walking the line between what she wanted and didn’t want. If she wanted constant sex for four hours, and the apparatus gave that to her, there wasn’t any line. But without any help, she was a little afraid the experience would tilt too far the other way, into something ugly and painful. She lifted the glass stopper with its long stinger and let one drop of ‘chalc gather at the tip and fall into her cup.

The stink was immediate and intense. Holding her breath, Bethany drank the cup down as quickly as she could. A moment later, Bran did likewise. Setting her cup down, she asked, “Now what?”

For an answer, Bran wordlessly steered her back to the table with the enchanted silverite on it. Lord Cyril appeared moments later. “You’re ready? Oh, wonderful. Please, let me take your robe.” She let him take it without much thought; plenty of other guests who’d already gotten into the ‘chalc had shed theirs. Cyril dropped it carelessly over the back of a chair and offered her a hand. “If you would step onto the table?”

She watched curiously as he positioned her, one foot to either side of the silverite slab, a little wider, now back a step. Could she kneel? “You’re not in the Chantry,” Bran observed when she did. 

“However she’s comfortable,” Cyril insisted.

“She’s comfortable taking direction, and people want to _see_. Give them a good show, girl.” Either the orichalcum was hitting or it was just the order to display herself; Bethany felt herself flush as she slid her knees apart until she was splayed open. “See? That’s much better.”

Cyril’s pale face was pinked as well. Murmuring something, he reached under her to activate some of the runes. Forcefields, glowing a translucent pale white, shimmered around each of her legs up to the hip, holding her fixed in place. Cyril peered up from around her navel. “Everything well?” Bethany nodded, so he asked, “Do you want to start with something in particular?”

Bran sighed and reached forward to tap the silverite between her knees with one of the small rods. A small ball of force, buzzing with the effects of a telekinetic shiver spell, conjured into existence between her legs and rolled around until it settled lightly on her clit. A few more taps and scratches, and a bluntly rounded cylindrical forcefield nudged its way inside her. Bran scratched thoughtfully, and she felt it tilt to an angle that would press against the sensitive spots inside her. A final, authoritative tap, and it began to slide back and forth. “A good start,” the seneschal nodded. “There’s plenty of time to play.” He favored her with a lingering heavy-lidded stare before shucking his own robe and crossing the room in search of a partner.

It was different, she'd give it that. Bethany was used to more _personal_ encounters, preferrably with a lot of spine-tingling suggestions. Now she was mostly being ignored.

Well, not totally. Guests who'd finished their first rounds, and who weren't rutting out of their minds on the 'chalc, chatted with wine glasses in their hands and glanced her way. Was the cool indifference exciting, or was that just the aphrodisiac talking? 

The force magic was _definitely_ exciting. She was absolutely locked down, waist to toes; when the combination of the buzzing shiver rune and the thrusting phallus put her over the edge, she tried to pull away from them both and _couldn't_. She strained uselessly for a few moments, whining from the overstimulation, until she unexpectedly climaxed again. And then _again._

Panting, she found herself wishing for something to slouch against, or maybe push on, as she tried to buck away from the apparatus again. The oversensitivity passed in a few moments, and the thing sent her along the road upward again.

After another string of vocal climaxes - that had never happened before, so she assumed it was the drug - a pair of naked, masked guests wandered over to peer between her legs. "Is that all she's getting?" one asked.

"Size it up," the other opined.

Tap, tap, _scraaaatch_ , and Bethany gasped as the phallus she was riding suddenly swelled and thickened. It felt _good_ , filling her up and rubbing all the right places even harder. Another tap and its pace picked up; she let her head drop back and she moaned as another climax built.

More guests stopped by after that, changing the strength of the shiver and the size or angle of the phallus. Someone added a second one for her ass, lubricated with an old-fashioned grease spell, and they stretched her open there, too. 

She wanted/didn't want to get off now. Even with the orichalcum keeping her hot, she was ready for a break, a breather, an escape from the relentless _pounding_. From the waist up, she twisted and jerked, wailing as she climaxed again and again, depsite the soreness, despite the burning. Her nails scrabbled uselessly at the forcefields over her thighs and she arched her back, rolling on the pleasure even as she wanted to escape it.

She caught Bran watching her a few times. Finally, she opened her eyes after another wave of orgasms subsided and found him standing in front of her. "Just give up," he said.

"Wh-what?"

"You're still fighting it, Bethany. Just give up. Here." She shook slightly from the apparatus's unrelenting assault as he leaned forward to scratch, tap, tap on the silverite. A plane of force angled up in front of her. "Relax."

She flopped forward, grateful to no longer have to hold herself up. She turned her head so that her cheek was pressed to the plane, and her hair streamed out in disarray over her shoulders. "I think I'd like to get, get off now, please."

Bran carefully wound one strand of hair around a finger. "Of course you would. But we just can't have it. You're taking it from two marvelously large cocks, fast and hard in your tight little holes... Everyone agrees, you're a splendid centerpiece."

 _"Bran..."_ she whined.

"Stop fighting it," he whispered, letting the single lock drop in favor of carding his hand through her hair. _"Surrender."_

She shuddered and crested again at the command. It simply wasn't _fair_ that he could _do_ that. "I'll t-try," she stuttered.

It took focus, which seemed counterintuitive. Shouldn't giving up be easier than that? But her instinct was to fight, to try to get away. She had to focus on being still... and Mage Bethany was actually very good at meditation and trance states.

It was like breaking through a sheet of ice into warm water beneath. She went limp, groaning from deep in her belly. Sensations pleasant and less so passed through her without resistance; she felt, she accepted, and the world dissolved around her. 

She flew.

She soared, she sailed through a starry sea. Instead of straining, higher and higher towards a climax, she just watched placidly as it swelled like a wave, approaching faster and faster and then breaking over her, leaving her tumbled on the shore and gasping for breath.

She could not say how long she drifted in that twilight when she heard a familiar voice by her ear: “You were made for this.” His hand twisted in her hair and pulled her up and back. “Say you are mine, body and soul and all, and I will give you this every minute of every day.”

 _”Bran.”_ She didn’t struggle but hung heavily, feeling the tightness across her scalp.

_”Say it.”_

She opened her mouth, closed it, shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Because of Emeric?” He knocked her roughly to the ground. “An old templar, mad from lyrium soon enough, and never quite enough of a _bastard_ to give you what you really need. Is he?” Bethany found herself lifted by the throat and jaw, slammed into a wall. Both her hands went to Bran’s wrist, but she found herself caught by that heavy-lidded gaze. “You know it’s true. This is what you want, just _say that you are mine._ ”

“I... I...” Bethany swallowed, caught in a fog of lust. If she said it, he would do _things_ to her and...

...this wasn’t right.

Bran shook his head as she looked, really looked at his arm, pinning her to the wall with a strength Kirkwall’s seneschal never had on his best day. Only in her dreams...

Raw magical energy sparked on her fingertips. The demon, realizing its ploy had failed, dropped her to flee. She hurled arcane force after it and -

\-----------

The first dose of the orichalcum was wearing off. Bethany, a beautifully debauched and moaning mess sprawled over the apparatus, would have to be gotten down soon. Bran glanced around for Cyril or someone else he might borrow for assistance -

\- and Bethany jerked bolt upright, screaming as if she’d been knifed.

The entire party froze for a startled moment. Then a burly woman near the table snapped to and slapped the silverite slab, hard, and all the forcefields vanished. Bethany tumbled to the table, breath coming unevenly.

Bran was shocked, when he finally reached her side, to find that Bethany Hawke was _crying_.

“I’m so sorry,” Cyril apologized over and over, settling his own robe over her shoulders. “What’s wrong? That’s never happened... Healer! Somebody get my healer!”

“No, no, it’s just... I just... I need to go home. To the Gallows. Right now.” She looked up, saw Bran and looked away, stricken. “Please get my things, I need to go.”

“Of course. I’ll... I’ll get them immediately.” _What_ had just happened?

Cyril insisted they take his coach. She huddled herself in the corner opposite and across from him, peering out the curtains. Quite a change from their promenade over here. “I... I apologize,” he said, with rare sincerity. “I didn’t realize... I _was_ watching, Bethany, I promise. You appeared to be enjoying yourself or I would have -”

“Apology accepted,” she said dully. And she said nothing more, until he helped her down from the carriage.

The night sea breeze blew in, tossing her dark hair as she tilted her head to look up at the Gallows. “This is where I need to be,” she said quietly. “Please, don’t waste any more coin or favors trying to get me out again.”

He wasn’t surprised, not after the way she’d been acting. It still stung. “Far be it from me to press my attentions where they are not wanted,” he said stiffly. 

She bowed her head. “That’s not it. It’s... it’s dangerous. You make me want things, dark things, and it almost destroyed me tonight. Probably would have killed you and your friends as well. That cannot happen again.”

Bran frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s not needful that you do.” She spared him one last glance and a small smile. “Thank you. Aside from the almost-dying part, it was a lovely party. I’ll miss... that sort of thing. Good night, seneschal.”

“Good night, Mage Bethany.”

And with that, she squared her shoulders and stepped forward into the Gallows.

He went home, alone.


End file.
